The future of forums (vs social media)

I can speak only for our forum.
There it works.

We have a lot of travel story's.
They become more often life story's from abroad with the use of mobile.
The story's with more afford to make them nice looking are done by normal pc.

Both kind of them have their audience.
 
teletubbi said:
The best way is with content.
For our forum, we have about 9k users, most of them 40-50+ I can say that we see an increase of new users who are in the 20. So the dice keeps rolling. If you offer information for a special subject you will always draw attention to new users.

It is because they find a lot about what they interested in.

In my country we have 3 main forums with the same subject. All of them running for years. And a lot of users are using all 3 forums.

The start is sometimes slow with the younger, but if they dig deeper and if you protect them a little from the old users (everybody know this problem with old users and newbies) they become part of the community.

They bring fresh ideas and share their point of view. You have only to listen to them. Till now nobody, even not the younger one, complain about missing interactions with social media. (we don't use Facebook or any other from inside the forum)
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Content alone doesn't work anymore. They view the content and leave. You have a mostly older crowd who is already out of the loop in terms of social media. Half of those users probably couldn't name another social service other than Facebook and Twitter. Those same 50 year old users are eventually going to slow their browsing habits, if they're not already at a crawl. What worked with that generation isn't the same as what works with people 30 years younger, less focus, and a need for things to be super simple.

I'm looking to reach the young crowd of 20 year olds who will stay with a site for the next ten+ years. It's sad when you have thousands of legit likes on your facebook page, and some of them are pretty active, but they simply won't make the jump to the real site. Heck, even facebook login is enabled, they barely have to do anything at all - but facebook is still easier for them, even the older ones who post - they simply won't do it.

Older crowds know forums, recognize them, and know how to use them. This younger bunch has so many other easy to use social sites that trying to get them involved by the masses is like pulling teeth from a t-rex.
 
Floyd R Turbo said:
Oh there's no doubt about that at all. I hate FB for that reason. FB groups are useless in that regard. It's like a mega-thread that is 10k posts where someone asks the same question over and over again, except that every single topic is the same question answered over and over again. After a few months of this it's like "friggin google it". I'm big into reef aquarium keeping so a newbie comes on and asks why their brand new tank has algae in it and it's time to throw up the same block of information you typed up 1 month ago for someone else all over again, can't just share a link to a previous FB post or anything like that.

I'm just saying that people gravitate to FB because of the sheer stupid level ease of use, esp on mobile. Big downfall for all current forums. Fix that downfall and you're one step closer to pulling those people in.
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LOL @ the same question over and over. YUP! That's especially true on gaming groups. They all say "is this any good" and I always say "I don't know, why don't you try it and tell us."

Forums are great in terms of providing searchable info, but if there's any digging that has to be done by the user, they often run. This next generation has a lot of lazy kids in the mix. We have to spoon feed them if we want them as a customer.
 
drastic said:
This next generation coming up barely knows what a forum is and they'll be damned if they need to take 2-3 extra steps to post something. That's not what this crybaby millennial era was raised to do. We gotta hand them everything.
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I don't find that to be that case at all. Most of the new users on my most active forum are "crybaby millennials." Maybe what you're doing doesn't interest them.

Besides, you don't have to worry about shaping the world for the next generation. They'll take care of that themselves.
 
drastic said:
What worked with that generation isn't the same as what works with people 30 years younger,
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You don't read my post in full.
I told you we have an increase in new registration who are in their 20 of age.

And we have more borders to cross to get access to all content. Even with this they stay.

You can't reduce everything to age.
 
Floyd R Turbo said:
See what I mean? 2.5 year old suggestion and on one seems to give a damn. Would make a huge difference for usability. IMO. But no one is listening!!
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Who says no one is listening?

Clearly you don't appreciate the sort of major changes that would be required for this sort of thing to be implemented. As has already been said by the developers elsewhere, some very popular features (a navigation manager is one example) just could not be implemented in XenForo 1.x. That's why they are developing XenForo 2.0 to allow them to implement some popular features and to bring the forum software both up-to-date and ready to handle changes and enhancements for years to come.

Incidentally, try uploading a photo onto Facebook using the mobile browser version m.facebook.com. It takes more clicks and is a similar process (initially) to uploading on XenForo, it's not a one-click process. It's the Facebook app which allows for fewer clicks to upload (and yes, that brings on another discussion as to whether or not there should be official XenForo apps).
 
I read often that, Facebook is for chit chat and forums for content and information, this is not true, users interested in accurate information today, often go to QA communities such as stackoverflow.com
Forums are full with information, but especially inaccurate information, they were not built to provide rich content, but expose diverse opinions.
Wikipedia automatically reject most links and content coming from forums,No matter the reliability of the content in question. In most minds, Forums can not provide reliable content.
It's funny to hear today, with the rise of social media, that it's easier to access information in forums, I have tried too many times to find help here, in XF or in other forums, it's almost impossible to find what I'm looking for without searching and researching and reading a ton of unrelated posts.
Question and Answer feature was planned years ago.. but never comes
We had to wait years to see tags feature in XF
It's obvious for me at least, that the actual development of forum industry are not oriented towards content management, but posts and user management, there is no way to distinguish in XF or any other forum software between poor content and rich content unless you know the person who posted it .
So what's the purpose of the forums today:
They are used by companies as support software for their own products.
They are still used by well established and old forums.
And they are used by older people, who know how to post and navigate in forums, and other hobbyist admins that prefer to own their data rather than publish it in Facebook.
Forum software is not the best platform for communication any more, Facebook does this better, Wordpress and QA communities provide better tools for searching content and information.
But I believe without doubt, That Mike, Chris and Kier are the most talented coders in forum software today, if there is anything that can change the old forum concept, it has to happen here in XF.
 
Mr Lucky said:
That option is already there, just don't create more than one node. Creating more than one is not compulsory.
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Not really. You have to still create a node, which means when the user clicks on FORUMS in your navigation, they're taken to a page that's basically blank except for the link to the single node.

The only way around it is to change the url in your navigation to point to the node itself, which then has all your threads.

If the option to have 0 nodes existed, then we wouldn't need to edit the navigation link and anyone who types in domain.com/forums would just see our threads instead of the page with a link to the node.
 
drastic said:
In all honesty, why does anyone chat on a forum when there's a Facebook group for just about everything
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Chatting on forums is dead.
Chit Chat forums are dead.
You can't start a new chit chat forum ... it is VERY likely to fail.
People prefer chatting on Facebook.
I dont see that changing.

Forums are for more Serious and Ongoing CONTENT discussion.

In a nutshell, forums should be about Content and Facebook is for socializing.
If your forum doesn't have better content than a Facebook Group. You are in big trouble.

Although Forums can have superior content than Facebook groups, do they do a good job of it ? OMG, No. Terrible really. A 56 page thread about an addon is well ... almost useless. Is it even a reasonable idea to read those pages ? Nope !

What has great content but no participation ? A wiki.

What should forums be ? ie. what structure should forums take ? Forums should die ! They already are. And they will die.

Forums need to change into Communities. Those communities could be based around threaded discussion (ie. a forum) ... but forums ... as they exist today ... hopefully will die. Especially because they aren't as useful as they could be.

How could a threaded discussion forum (Xenforo) become an INFORMATION (CONTENT) rich Community of the future ? Well that's the million dollar question.

and you don't have to go anywhere else when you're logged in. It's just too easy to do that now. I'm really struggling to get any of my Facebook people (12,000 of them) to register for my site.
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The already logged in thing is very hard to compete with.
Especially just for chit chatting.

On the topic of Facebook groups ..... I have YET to see ONE good one.

I've challenged people to show me good ones ... and have yet to see ONE.

If you think you know of a useful Facebook Group .... Post it here.

I've randomly selected two topics for my research in the past
  • Sony Vegas
  • Unusual plants

Both times, Facebook groups were terrible and the forums had much better information.

To me, Reddit may be more competition than Facebook (as they exist today). Could Facebook crush forums ? Yes. Will they ? Probably not.

sami simo said:
I read often that, Facebook is for chit chat and forums for content and information, this is not true, users interested in accurate information today, often go to QA communities such as stackoverflow.com
Forums are full with information, but especially inaccurate information, they were not built to provide rich content, but expose diverse opinions.
Wikipedia automatically reject most links and content coming from forums,No matter the reliability of the content in question. In most minds, Forums can not provide reliable content.
It's funny to hear today, with the rise of social media, that it's easier to access information in forums, I have tried too many times to find help here, in XF or in other forums, it's almost impossible to find what I'm looking for without searching and researching and reading a ton of unrelated posts.
Question and Answer feature was planned years ago.. but never comes
We had to wait years to see tags feature in XF
It's obvious for me at least, that the actual development of forum industry are not oriented towards content management, but posts and user management, there is no way to distinguish in XF or any other forum software between poor content and rich content unless you know the person who posted it .
So what's the purpose of the forums today:
They are used by companies as support software for their own products.
They are still used by well established and old forums.
And they are used by older people, who know how to post and navigate in forums, and other hobbyist admins that prefer to own their data rather than publish it in Facebook.
Forum software is not the best platform for communication any more, Facebook does this better, Wordpress and QA communities provide better tools for searching content and information.
But I believe without doubt, That Mike, Chris and Kier are the most talented coders in forum software today, if there is anything that can change the old forum concept, it has to happen here in XF.
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Boom. Should be required reading for Xenforo devs.

But I believe without doubt, That Mike, Chris and Kier are the most talented coders in forum software today,
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Definitely.
But are they the best community software programmers ?
if there is anything that can change the old forum concept, it has to happen here in XF.
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Interesting. I've thought about that one for a long time.
Xenforo's badge of honor is that it is an efficient version of vBulletin 3 with Likes and Alerts.
The Likes and Alerts were mostly just poached from Facebook. Not exactly pushing threaded communities into the future ! Of course, they did decimate the forum competition :)
 
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teletubbi said:
You don't read my post in full.
I told you we have an increase in new registration who are in their 20 of age.

And we have more borders to cross to get access to all content. Even with this they stay.

You can't reduce everything to age.
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I did read your whole post. Majority of your audience is 40+ with a small amount of 20's coming in.

Difference is that I want an entire audience of 20's/early 30's, not a sprinkle of them. Your audience is different because your niche is different. Your forum is probably way more successful than mine ever will be based on your topic and the fact that your average age of users has much more experience surfing forums than the crowd I'm trying to harvest. I picked a tough crowd to attract, but it's going to be a fun challenge!

Find me a random 20 year old and put them in front of a forum, they wouldn't know what to do. Find me a 30+ person and they can navigate a forum with their eyes closed.
 
drastic said:
Not really. You have to still create a node, which means when the user clicks on FORUMS in your navigation, they're taken to a page that's basically blank except for the link to the single node.

The only way around it is to change the url in your navigation to point to the node itself, which then has all your threads.

If the option to have 0 nodes existed, then we wouldn't need to edit the navigation link and anyone who types in domain.com/forums would just see our threads instead of the page with a link to the node.
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Go to ACP > Options > Basic Board Information and point the "Index Page Route" to the route for your single node. Now your home page will display the thread list for that single node. No further tricks necessary.

Or, create a route filter for that node pointing to the route 'forums' (the default index route). That way you don't have to edit any templates.
 
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Jeremy P said:
Go to ACP > Options > Basic Board Information and point the "Index Page Route" to the route for your single node. Now your home page will display the thread list for that single node. No further tricks necessary.
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I had to do it the manually in the navigation template because I'm testing out a new addon as my homepage. Want to see if that ruffles any feathers.

Thanks for the tip!
 
Does anyone else focus on viral media and trending news?

If you do, want to touch base and see if there's a way we can join up. I run my sites alone and it sucks ass not having someone to bounce ideas from and help gather members.
 
Should we put together a list of ideas on how we can conquer social media?

Maybe that might spark some cool ideas for XF 2 or even our own little projects.

On a funny note, should we make a Facebook group to promote our content with? Make all of us authors to it, see if we can collectively take something viral and all benefit from it?
 
On a side note my 13yr old is quite a social kid. Her and her friends primarily use google hangouts and gmail. She was initially very excited to build her facebook account once turning 13, but since hardly uses it. She says it's too time consuming and she would rather do other things than scrolling down an endless page. So for her it's more interactive live chatting, passing emails and for entertainment she is on youtube all the time as well as hulu/netflix. One article that was interesting:

Facebook has spread like an infectious disease but we are slowly becoming immune to its attractions, and the platform will be largely abandoned by 2017, say researchers at Princeton University (pdf).

The forecast of Facebook's impending doom was made by comparing the growth curve of epidemics to those of online social networks. Scientists argue that, like bubonic plague, Facebook will eventually die out.

The social network, which celebrates its 10th birthday on 4 February, has survived longer than rivals such as Myspace and Bebo, but the Princeton forecast says it will lose 80% of its peak user base within the next three years.
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I think their time frame is a bit off, more like 2019-2020. I'm close to deleting my Facebook for one main reason -time- and if you don't have time to "like" or comment on all your friends postings it sort of makes you feel guilty. "Oh man, Jeff had a kid last week and I didn't say anything!" -multiply that 300x a day! lol.

In closing, forums are there to dip into as you need, to gain or share. It's not a perpetual hamster wheel that is social media. Maybe at 40 I'm burned out on it, I don't have a young enough brain to deal with the relentless barrage of data. At some point you have to ask, why? That's when I close my macbook and go on a hike.
 
sross said:
if you don't have time to "like" or comment on all your friends postings it sort of makes you feel guilty
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There's a simple solution to that - quit caring what other people think about you. If they are really your friend they will call you or send you an email directly. Facebook guilt, gone.
 
I read pretty much the same projections about FB's impending doom 5 years ago. And 3. And 2...

Oh and a single person's experience with FB is really statistically insignificant. Even a small country's would be. Just saying...
 
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